1 Are Greek Neo-Nazis Fighting for Assad in Syria?

Not every report that comes out of
Syria is bad news for Bashar al-Assad, the country's president. While the
world's media worries&lt;span style=&quot;color:windowtext;text-decoration:none;text-underline:
none&quot;&gt; about recently radicalized jihadists flying from
England to Aleppo to gun down the embattled leader's soldiers, there's another
type of international engagement playing out in the country—and this time, it's
playing out in the regime's favor.

Since the conflict began in 2011,
far-right groups from across the world have been courting the Syrian
government. On the slightly more moderate end of the scale, BNP leader Nick
Griffin rode into Damascus a few months back&lt;span style=&quot;color:windowtext;text-decoration:none;text-underline:
none&quot;&gt; to have his photo taken
with the prime minister, Wael Nader Al-Halqi, and publicly rail against the
Free Syrian Army. On the more extreme end, fascist Greek mercenaries may now be
training in Syria to help defend Assad and have formed a European support
network to spread pro-regime propaganda.

Just over a month ago, the
Irish-Greek blogger &lt;span style=&quot;color:windowtext;text-decoration:none;text-underline:
none&quot;&gt;Glykosymoritis sent me an article translated from the
right-wing Greek newspaper, Democratia. The clipping contained an interview with an obscure far-right
group called Black Lily, who were making bold claims about having a &quot;whole
platoon of volunteers [who] are fighting side by side with Assad's government
forces.&quot;

I spent the subsequent weeks emailing
the group, looking for pictures or video evidence to prove that their fighters
are on the ground. The group's responses were guarded, as they were apparently
worried for the safety of their members, but their claims weren't totally
implausible. &quot;These days, more Greeks are in Syria with the Syrian Armed
Forces,&quot; they told me. &quot;Very soon we are going to have news.&quot;

Although it might seem odd, the story
isn't particularly shocking. Assad's door has been open to far-right groups for
years. In 2005, five years after Bashar had assumed power, American white
nationalist and KKK grand wizard David Duke visited Damascus to give a
televized speech where he attacked Israel and told the Syrian leader, &quot;Your fight for freedom is the same as our fight
for freedom.&quot; The regime was charmed, and clearly happy to play host to an
American Holocaust denier who would back their dislike of Israel.

Unfortunately, any similar kind of direct
link between Assad and Black Lily was hard to establish; my contact was
guarded, using the name Sebastian Fulidis—presumably a pseudonym taken from a
Greek soldier who'd fought for the Nazi Special Forces. The source quickly let
me know that I wouldn't be able to travel to meet the group while they were
supposedly training for war in Syria.

The newspaper clipping had talked
Black Lily up, claiming that the &quot;Greek nationalist socialists […]
fighting alongside Assad's regime are far more dangerous than the Golden
Dawn.&quot; Given what we now know about the Golden Dawn's sideline in being genuinely dangerous, I wanted to find out whether Black Lily
live up to the hype.

The group subscribes to autonomous
nationalism, a postmodern far-right subculture that often blends anarchist
aesthetics with militant far-right and anti-capitalist rhetoric, focusing
heavily on direct action rather than electoralism. As Third Positionists, they
see themselves as being beyond the notions of left and right, and offer support
to separatist movements in hopes that we can all one day end up living in a
world with rigidly defined ethnic and nationalist boundaries. (While flirting
with these same ideas, a younger Nick Griffin visited Libya in the late 1980s&lt;span style=&quot;color:windowtext;text-decoration:none;text-underline:
none&quot;&gt; to try to gain support for the
&quot;political soldier&quot; faction of the National Front to which he belonged
at the time.)

The newspaper clipping I was sent
claimed that Black Lily have been in touch with their &quot;Syrian brothers in
arms&quot; for years, before describing how they have now joined the fight
alongside the regime: “Fighters from all over Europe joined the ranks of the
Syrian Army and civil defence in mass,&quot; it read, &quot;among them many
Greeks. Greek fighters have participated in all major battles that commenced in
[the] south and west of the country [over] the last two years, and so far no
casualties have been reported. It's not a coincidence that, in the fierce
battle that took place in al-Qusayr, beside the praise for the heroic
Hezbollah, the Greek fighters received credit for their bravery as well.&quot;

Of course, considering the convenient
lack of casualties, there is no definitive proof that Black Lily's claims are
true. However, they're devoted to prove their allegiances, saying that Syria
has a strong cultural link with Greece (the largest Christian group in the
country is the Greek Orthodox church), and when pushed on the number of
fighters they have on the ground, they told me that they have a platoon
fighting in Syria who, according to their interview, &quot;found loads of ID
documents and passports of compatriots of Barack Obama&quot; on dead rebels
after the battle in al-Qusayr.

The group also says that thousands of
Russians, Ukrainians, and Polish nationalists have declared themselves ready to
defend Assad, which might seem like another work of fantasy, but could also
have some basis in truth: a rebel blogger recently wrote&lt;span style=&quot;color:windowtext;text-decoration:none;text-underline:
none&quot;&gt; that he'd encountered mercenary military
advisers from Russia and Eastern Europe. &quot;They are not sent by the armies
of these countries,&quot; he wrote, &quot;but they have a military background.
This is what is making things in Ghouta so hard—they can attack from so many
areas because of their large numbers, and when we kill some of them, more want
to come to Syria and fight.&quot;

In the past, far-right Greek mercenaries have fought in the Balkans&lt;span style=&quot;color:windowtext;text-decoration:none;text-underline:
none&quot;&gt;—more specifically, a former
Greek army officer and a former Greek police officer who were charged with
killing two Albanians during a cross-border raid. So previous examples of
the same kind of people waging war overseas aren't unheard of.

My Black Lily contact also
&quot;revealed&quot; that they are part of the European Solidarity Front for
Syria (ESFS), a group that has organized protests and rallies in support of
Assad across the continent. The ESFS have also held talks about Syria in
Italy—hosted by the fascist group CasaPound—that have been exposed as fronts for fascist Third Positionist group meet-ups&lt;span style=&quot;color:windowtext;text-decoration:none;text-underline:
none&quot;&gt;,
with Belgian Third Positionist Ruben Sosiers listed as the main speaker at a
June event in Rome. Flags from CasaPound, the ESFS-affiliated Sempre Domani and
the fascist-inspired group Zenit were all on display at a later meeting.

The ESFS boasts of erecting 17 billboards in Greecehttp://www.frontesiria.org/?page_id=60, and their facebook shows all the slick merchandise that is
available to their supporters. More worryingly, they've been invited into Italian schoolshttp://www.frontesiria.org/?p=195 to speak about the situation in
Syria.

Looking at their branches&lt;span style=&quot;color:windowtext;
text-decoration:none;text-underline:none&quot;&gt; in France,
Spain, and the Czech Republic, it quickly becomes clear that this European
network of fascists ostensibly looking to help Assad may also be securing money
from the Syrian government, helping them to spread their niche philosophy.
Hundreds of flags, posters, and flights to Syria don’t pay for themselves, and
the autonomous nationalists would be able to gain greater resources through
their Syria campaign than they are usually capable of mustering. In short, they
may be using the civil war there as a method of fundraising.

While the ESFS have been able to make
contact with pro-Assad members of the Syrian community, it's unclear whether
the people who have shown up to their protests in Rome and other European capitals&lt;span style=&quot;color:windowtext;text-decoration:none;text-underline:
none&quot;&gt; are fully aware
of who is behind them. One thing that has been made clear by a number of photos is that the ESFS have infiltrated larger
antiwar protests, passing themselves off as anti-war activists, and have built
some support within Syrian migrant communities.

Scratching beyond the rhetoric, it's
clear that the ESFS' predominant common cause with Assad is an entrenched
sentiment of anti-Zionism—their shared hatred of Israelis. Tellingly, Black
Lily’s interview in the newspaper clipping ends with a call to action for
&quot;ZOG&quot; (Zionist Occupation Government), an anti-Semitic
conspiracy that claims Jews run the world. &quot;We call all these people with
open minds to support by all means the patriotic forces of Syria,&quot; it
reads, &quot;and understand that they have to ready themselves for the incoming
storm that is approaching toward them fast because of the plans of the local
Zionist occupation government back home.&quot;

The fact that fascists are traveling
to Syria is currently one of the country's smallest problems—myriad shadowy
groups and political motivations play in the conflict, but as Assad becomes
more desperate, the presence of idealistic Europeans with large networks
of activists could become a much larger concern.